Gladys Blake

Biography
by Hal Erickson

Supporting actress Gladys Blake first appeared onscreen in the late 1930s. In Warren Meyers' Who is That?, a picture book devoted to Hollywood's favorite character actors, Blake is lumped together with such cinematic tarts as Veda Ann Borg and Olga San Juan in a chapter titled "My, Isn't She Cheap?" In truth, Blake's appearances as "naughty ladies" were limited. During her 12-year (1938-1950) screen career, she was most often seen as a garrulous telephone operator, most memorably in Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? (1942). Gladys Blake's final screen role was, appropriately enough, "The Talkative Woman" in Paid in Full (1950).